Trunk Line

        "The world above ground, and the world below are very tightly linked"
             Dr. Diana H. Wall     

The green monkey stood on the little bit of land left in the dark wood. His feet were wet, but he was small enough and the forest thick enough that he need never touch earth again.

Everything was sunk in water, so trees needed to have thirsty roots although they'd never drink this place dry. Anybody who came here risked stepping in a deep hole and never getting out. The soft drops of water in the silence, more like a cave than a forest.

Look. You can see where he came down, a little telephone set in the trunk: an old-fashioned device, rectangular body with a mouthpiece protruding like an ebony bloom, and the ear piece connected by a flexible branch to the tree's roots.

Those roots go everywhere, through the water and wood, through the protozoa and fungi in the loamy spaces, carrying the monkey's line.

Monkey, or some other ape? Like Red Peter but never captured, Green Pavel but always talking.

I'll hear his call sometime when I'm drifting off. It's like a hard electric crackle and spark in my ear, like something's jumped from very far away, jumped from the mangroves and banyans, the willows and ash, and lit up the green woods around me.

Guess the cliche

Right by the atrium
the antique airplane suspended
four floors above the court.

I feel poised up here
like a cliff diver set to plunge
into aqua azul salada
or like a kestrel
about to pounce

or the hard-boiled
detective finally trapping
the lunatic killer on the
climactic and frail catwalk
high above the stage.

NaPoWriMo day four

Our drones cut off the rebel's leg,

and his son's life. The CIA's

ABCs, what could be simpler?

my disgusting sobriety, my anti-hangover

I used to see with my obsolete heart

I need to adopt a feistier mien

to regiment those finer feelings

to gulp down an alpha-blocker,

quelling my anxiety

perceiving like the Alpha males

my drone a cock ready to service

Swivels like compasses pointing to

the next threat

or a hooded cobra swaying (a chimera)

towards a six-year-old whose jaw was blown off.

from elementary schools to the Middle East

What is superior in anxiety?

NaPoWriMo Day Nine

No! I am not Prince Hamlet.
   --T. S. Eliot

I am not Hamlet either.
Am the lute you fret upon:
always almost out of tune
with some rust in its voice,

more suited for an ancient air:
wind-blown from the mountains,
a ragged melody, a melancholy alm
the past drops in the player's palm

NaPoWriMo Day Five: a cinquaine

Why did
our neighbor's dog
start barking late at night?
Beneath our shed a fox nurses
her kits.

NaPoWriMo Day Three

What woman expresses milk
just to run it down the sink? 
Unless more milk than her baby 
will take or her baby died 
or she gave it up so now 
her body reminds her 
she's got nothing to mother. 

That's a wicked poetry.

NaPoWriMo Day Two: A Lie

I'll never leave you,
I'll always be true
If I left you with a scar
it was only because we'd gone so far

in love that human flesh
was tested beyond
its capacity
for ecstasy.

I only hurt you because
I love you too much.

Day one NaPoWriMo

The priest and the old women
in black, like the crows
and the hole
where the coffin rests.

Dead quiet, but the crows
and the echo
out of the grave
like a broken mouth.

Thanks to Ai and her "Father and Son."

No. 5 from the Book of the Hanging Gardens

Saget mir, auf welchem Pfade heute sie vorüber schreite, daß ich aus der reichsten Lade zarte Seidenweben hole, Rose pflücke und Viole, daß ich meine Wange breite, Schemel unter ihrer Sohle.           Stefan George

Tell me in which path today she strides over, that I from the richest chest soft woven silk might bring, rose might pluck and violet, that I my broad cheek, footstool under her sole.